The Penghu or Pescadores Islands are an archipelago of 64 islands and islets in the Taiwan Strait. The largest city is Magong, located on the largest island, which is also named Penghu. Covering an area of 141 square kilometers (54 sq mi), the archipelago collectively forms Penghu County of Republic of China (known as Taiwan), and is the second smallest county, after Lienchiang.

Finds of fine red cord-marked pottery indicate that Penghu was visited by people from southwestern Taiwan around 5,000 years ago, though not settled permanently.[2]

Han Chinese from southern Fujian began to establish fishing communities on the islands in the 9th and 10th centuries,[2] and representatives were intermittently stationed there by the Southern Song and Yuan governments from around 1170.[3]

In the 15th century, the Ming ordered the evacuation of the islands as part of their maritime ban. When these restrictions were removed in the late 16th century, fishing communities were re-established on the islands, giving rise to its Portuguese and then English name.[3] The Ming established a military presence in 1603, repelling a Dutch attempt to establish a base on the islands in 1622.[4]

The Dutch East India Company tried to use military force to make China open up a port in Fujian to trade and demanded that China expel the Portuguese from Macau, whom the Dutch were fighting in the Dutch–Portuguese War. The Dutch raided Chinese shipping after 1618 and took junks hostage in an unsuccessful attempt to get China to meet their demands.[5][6][7]

The Dutch were defeated by the Portuguese at the Battle of Macau in 1622. That same year, the Dutch seized Penghu (the Pescadores), built a fort there, and continued to demand that China open up ports in Fujian to Dutch trade. China refused, with the Chinese Governor of Fujian (Fukien) Shang Zhouzuo (Shang Chou-tso) demanding that the Dutch withdraw from the Pescadores to Formosa (Taiwan), where the Chinese would permit them to engage in trade. This led to a war between the Dutch and China between 1622 and 1624 which ended with the Chinese being successful in making the Dutch withdraw to Taiwan and abandoning Pescadores.[8][9] The Dutch threatened that China would face Dutch raids on Chinese ports and shipping unless the Chinese allowed trading on Penghu and that China not trade with Manila but only with the Dutch in Batavia and Siam and Cambodia. China wasn't persuaded by these threats. After Shang ordered them to withdraw to Taiwan on September 19 of 1622, the Dutch raided Xiamen (Amoy) on October and November.[10] The Dutch intended to "induce the Chinese to trade by force or from fear" by raiding Fujian and Chinese shipping from the Pescadores.[11] Long artillery batteries were erected at Amoy in March 1622 by Colonel Li-kung-hwa as a defence against the Dutch.[12]

On the Dutch attempt in 1623 to force China to open up a port, five Dutch ships were sent to Liu-ao and the mission ended in failure for the Dutch, with a number of Dutch sailors taken prisoner and one of their ships lost. In response to the Dutch using captured Chinese for forced labor and strengthening their garrison in Penghu with five more ships in addition to the six already there, the new Governor of Fujian Nan Juyi (Nan Chü-i) was permitted by China to begin preparations to attack the Dutch forces in July 1623. A Dutch raid was defeated by the Chinese at Amoy on October 1623, with the Chinese taking the Dutch commander Christian Francs prisoner and burning one of the four Dutch ships. The Chinese began an offensive on February 1624 with warships and troops against the Dutch in Penghu with the intent of expelling them.[13] The Chinese offensive reached the Dutch fort on July 30, 1624, with 5,000 Chinese troops (or 10,000) and 40-50 warships under General Wang Mengxiong surrounding the fort commanded by Marten Sonck, and the Dutch were forced to sue for peace on August 3 and folded before the Chinese demands, withdrawing from Penghu to Taiwan (Formosa). The Dutch admitted that their attempt at military force to coerce China into trading with them had failed with their defeat in Penghu. At the Chinese victory celebrations over the "red-haired barbarians", as the Dutch were called by the Chinese, Nan Juyi (Nan Chü-yi) paraded twelve Dutch soldiers who were captured before the Emperor in Beijing.[14][15][16][17] The Dutch did not expect the subsequent Chinese attack on their fort in Penghu since they thought of them as timid and from their experience in Southeast Asia as a "faint-hearted troupe".[18]

The Penghu archipelago was captured by the French in March 1885, in the closing weeks of the Sino-French War, and evacuated four months later. The Pescadores Campaign was the last campaign of Admiral Amédée Courbet, whose naval victories during the war had made him a national hero in France. Courbet was among several French soldiers and sailors who succumbed to cholera during the French occupation of Penghu. He died aboard his flagship Bayard in Makung harbour on 11 June 1885.[23]

In the Cairo Declaration of 1943, the United States, the United Kingdom and China stated it to be their purpose that "all the territories that Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Formosa and The Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China". On 26 July 1945, the three governments issued the Potsdam Declaration, declaring that "the terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out". In the Treaty of San Francisco, signed in 1951 and coming into effect in 1952, Japan renounced sovereignty over Taiwan and Penghu, but left their final disposition unsettled. The archipelago has been administered by the Republic of China since that time.

Boat people from Vietnam who were taken in by Taiwan's ships in the South China Sea were sent to the Pescadores.[25]

In the early 1990s, the Penghu National Scenic Area that comprises most but not all of the islands and islets of the archipelago was created. Tourism has since become one of the main sources of income of the county.

The main islands of Magong City/Huxi Township, Baisha Township, and Xiyu Township are the three most populous islands and are connected via bridges. Two shorter bridges connect Huxi and Baisha. The bridge connecting Baisha and Xiyu is the longest bridge in the Republic of China and is called the Penghu Great Bridge.

Under a wind power development project approved in 2002 by the Executive Yuan, the ROC government plans to set up a total of 200 wind turbines in Penghu within 10 years. However, only 14 turbines have been set up as of 2015[update]. On 1 October 2015, Taipower announced the construction of another 11 new wind turbines across the island, in which 6 will be constructed in Huxi Township and 5 in Baisha Township.[30]

The current total desalination capacity of the county to provide clean water to its residents is 15,500 m3 per day. To reduce its groundwater use, in November 2015 the county secured a contract of building an additional desalination plant with 4,000 m3 capacity per day, which its construction is expected to be completed by May 2018.[31]

—— (2006). "The Seventeenth-century Transformation: Taiwan under the Dutch and the Cheng Regime". In Rubinstein, Murray A. Taiwan: A New History. M.E. Sharpe. pp. 84–106. ISBN978-0-7656-1495-7. OL8055024M.